`Just Another Game,' But High-profile Tv

So are Marv Albert, Doug Collins and Steve Kerr, the play-by-play team TNT last used for the NBA All-Star Game.

In fact, the next time the Heat plays at AmericanAirlines Arena, there will be a playoff-type studio built above the court by the west end zone.

So how big is Thursday's Heat-Lakers game, or Kobe-Shaq II if you prefer?

"Just another game to us," center Shaquille O'Neal said before Monday's game against the Bucks. "We're focused on something that's so much bigger than that."

Thursday's game marks a rematch of the teams' highly rated Christmas Day extravaganza, won in overtime by the Heat. Since then, O'Neal and the Heat have soared, while Kobe Bryant and the Lakers have settled in at the bottom of the Western Conference playoff race.

"I don't think it'll be nearly to the same level," coach Stan Van Gundy said. "I don't know why it would be a huge deal, to be quite honest."

O'Neal does.

"You know Kenny and those guys are going to do what they do to market the game and get people interested in the game," O'Neal said of TNT's popular studio cast, which will follow the Thursday broadcast from AmericanAirlines Arena with a postgame show from Bayside Marketplace.

Although O'Neal refrained from mentioning Bryant's name, there was a veiled shot when asked how long it had been since he felt this good about his playing situation.

"Eight years," he said. "This is like the first time that I can say I've been on a good team where everybody was on the same page."

As for the Lakers' struggles, O'Neal leaves those to others, although that might change when he records a one-on-one interview Wednesday with TNT's Johnson after his image is unveiled on a Wheaties box.

"It's always business; it's never personal," O'Neal said. "Once you start to get personal feeling into it, then your day is going to be miserable.

"We're focusing on the whole pie, not a slice. A slice is good, but it's not good enough to get you fat. We're trying to get fat."

Divorced from the Lakers by July's trade, O'Neal said he is luxuriating in the good life.

"I've got five beautiful children, a wife, I'm living a great life," he said. "I live on the water. When you have that view, nothing to complain about. I had the girls-gone-wild view."

Bryant, too, has toned down the rhetoric, although he will sit down for a one-on-one interview with TNT's Smith in advance of Thursday's national broadcast.

GOOD TIMES

The weekend proved especially rewarding to power forward Udonis Haslem, whose high school (Miami) won a state championship and whose college (Florida) won the Southeastern Conference title.

"It's really good right now," he said before Monday's game. "Today's my father's birthday also. It's pretty good right now, but I don't want to jinx it. I'm just going to roll with it."...

Tonight's game against the Knicks pits O'Neal against undersized nemesis Malik Rose, who often defended him while with the Spurs.